


I Will Not Say Goodbye

by tarysande



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bamf Chloe, Everything Hurts, F/M, Post-Season/Series 04, Romance, The Ending Doesn't Hurt, except the ending, the five stages of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 10:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19828252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: She can’t pinch herself. She can’t turn her body or her head or even just her chin to face the apartment behind her. Because if she pinches herself and doesn’t wake, if she turns and finds Lucifer’s penthouse empty, she’ll have to admit the truth—and her lies are so much prettier.





	I Will Not Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [randomkiwibirds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomkiwibirds/gifts).



> Written for The Deckerstar Network's Fearless Love challenge. This story is for randomkiwibirds, who requested a fic inspired by the song My Love Will Never Die, by Claire Wyndham. (YOU KNOW THE ONE. THE ONE THAT MAKES OUR HEARTS BLEED.) 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! I really loved writing this--even when it surprised me (and it did!).

**_sea may rise, sky may fall_ **

He’s here. He’s gone.

And with the light of his wings still shimmering in the air like a desert mirage or the ghost of lightning burning the back of her retinas, Chloe Decker stands on his balcony and weeps until she has no more tears for crying. Even with the cool breeze blowing against it, her skin remains warm where he touched it. The scent of his cologne lingers. And the sound of the words he spoke—no.

No, that part’s not true. That part can’t be true. Because if that part’s true, then so is the rest, and if the rest is true, she’ll never—she’ll never—

So, Chloe remains silent, still, watching the sky grow paler, as if this day is just like every other day that has come before it.

Maybe it is. Maybe this is all a bad dream borne of stress and one too many glasses of medicinal wine; her psyche tormenting her with all her worst fears brought forcefully and cruelly into reality.

Maybe she’ll wake in her own bed, sweaty and restless and unsatisfied. Maybe she’ll walk into work and find Lucifer leaning back in her chair, feet propped up on the desk, ankles crossed, once again playing with some object—stapler, coffee cup, plant—never meant to be a toy. Maybe he’ll grin at her, at once ancient angel and ageless child, and offer her coffee that’s somehow still perfectly hot.

Or maybe she’ll turn away from the brightening sky and find Lucifer asleep in his bed—naked, probably, with mussed hair and a faint furrow in his brow because even sleeping, he’ll wonder why she spent the whole night staring at the sky and crying when she could have been wrapped up in his warmth. She wonders the same thing.

She can’t pinch herself. She can’t turn her body or her head or even just her chin to face the apartment behind her. Because if she pinches herself and doesn’t wake, if she turns and finds Lucifer’s penthouse empty, she’ll have to admit the truth—and her lies are so much prettier.

#

Later, when she has wrapped herself in one of the shirts that still smells of him and has fallen asleep on the pillow that still holds the indent of his head, she dreams of a lonely man on a lonely chair, set high above a lonely world. Nothing is red, except the soles of his shoes and the silk of his pocket square; everything else is the black and blue of a deep bruise. When she reaches toward him, her hand hits an invisible barricade.

She’s a California girl who’s never really understood the phrase “so cold it burns.”

Now she understands. She wishes she didn’t.

He lifts his head.

He’s here.

“Darling,” he says, eyes sad and brow definitely furrowed. “Darling, you mustn’t do this.”

She opens her mouth to speak, to plead, to beg, if that’s what it takes, but it’s already too late—

He’s gone. She’s gone.

When she finally heads toward the elevator a day or a month or a year later, she spots an envelope on the closed lid of the piano, the cream of the paper glowing like a beacon against the darkness of the gleaming wood. No return address, no stamp; just her name, _Chloe_ , written in an elegantly cursive hand in ink so dark a red it looks black. The envelope is sealed with wax marked with the unmistakable impression of a ring she recognizes at once.

She doesn’t open the letter. She can’t. She puts it in her purse.

She steps out into the nightmare.

**_go on, go on, go bravely on_ **

When she returns to work, no one asks about Lucifer. No one talks about him at all. Not a word.

Which is worse, she thinks, than the questions would have been. Instead of talking to others about him—people who liked him; people who cared about him; hell, even people who hated him—she’s forced to carry the weight of his absence alone, like he was an imaginary friend she grew out of, even though she didn’t want to, even though she wants nothing more than to have him back again, annoying the hell out of her and warming her heart in equal measure.

She wants to stand in the middle of the bullpen and shout his name. Then, at least, someone would have to listen. Then, at least, someone would have to care, to acknowledge his existence.

Instead, she stalks to Dan’s desk and snarls, “This is your fault.”

He blinks up at her, sheepish and sad and uncertain all at once, almost like he’s expecting her to hit him. She hates this expression. She has _always_ hated this expression. At one time, near the end of their relationship, she saw it so often she forgot what his smiles looked like, or the particular sound of his laughter. Her ex-husband knows how to play her. He knows where she’s tender; he knows where to push.

“Chlo, look—”

She hates the way he calls her _Chlo_ ; hates that he blamed Lucifer—already blaming himself, no doubt—for Charlotte’s death; hates that she didn’t say more or defend Lucifer when it might have counted, when it might have helped. She hates Dan’s kicked puppy look because again and again and again, that look stayed her hand and silenced her tongue and made her _goddamned complicit in his crimes._

“Shut. Up.”

He shuts up.

Chloe’s on fire. Her blood boils in her veins; her eyes burn. She’s Joan of Arc, martyred and miserable and too late, too late, too late.

She says, “You made his life a living hell, Dan. You poked and poked and poked, looking for weaknesses, and then you twisted every knife you stabbed him with, and you laughed as you did it. You laughed and you strutted and you did your damnedest to score points against someone who wasn’t even playing your game because even the _Devil_ would never sink so low.” She leaned closer; Dan leaned away, the wheels of his chair squeaking into the dead silence. “ _You’re_ the monster. _You’re_ the monster and looking at you makes me _sick_.”

Charlotte, trapped forever in the two dimensions of a photograph, smiles behind Dan’s shoulder; Charlotte, who’s in Heaven. Charlotte, who Lucifer said he’d never see again.

Just like _she_ won’t see Lucifer. Because Chloe knows, _she knows_ , that no matter how bad she is or how much guilt she feels, he will never let her pass through his gates. _How_ dare _you, Lucifer,_ she thinks. _How dare you make that choice for me?_

She narrows her eyes at the photograph. She turns that narrowed gaze on Dan. And then, with all the vitriol she’s stored and saved over years and heartbreaks, she spits, “You won’t see her again. Not where you’re going. Not after what you’ve done.”

The blood has drained from Dan’s face, leaving him grey and green and ill, but it’s not even satisfying because his expression tells her he already knows. She’s repeating things he’s already thought.

And she hates that, too, because here he sits, safe and sound at his desk, working, like today is just like every other day that has come before it, while Lucifer—

While Lucifer takes an axe in the chest for her, for them, for all of them, again, and again, and again.

Chloe doesn’t realize she's lifted her hand to strike until Ella’s smaller hand curls around her forearm and startles her into stillness. 

“Hey, girlfriend,” says Ella, grabbing Chloe’s hand and gripping it with cool fingers. “C’mon. Let’s get outta here for a few, okay?”

And even though Chloe wants to let the fires of her rage burn away everything she is from the inside out—maybe then she can start over, maybe then she can forget—Ella’s touch is a balm. A cold compress on a fevered brow. 

Without once letting go of her hand, Ella leads Chloe out of the bullpen where no one and everyone’s watching and no one says Lucifer’s name, and out into a shady courtyard. Smokers flee like grubs abruptly facing the sun, stinking of stale cigarettes and poison.

Lucifer, Chloe realizes, never smelled of smoke, even after he’d been smoking. She wonders why.

She hates that she can never ask him.

“This is a spare,” Ella says, handing Chloe a plaster boot-print she’d been carrying under her other arm.

Chloe accepts it. Men’s size 10, she guesses. And then she throws it as hard as she can against the flagstones. It shatters, filling the air with dust that falls like ash, clinging to her sensible brown shoes.

“I have more,” Ella adds.

Chloe nods. Hurts. Burns up. Burns out.

#

Later, when she dreams of him, solitary figure on his solitary throne, she slams her fists against the invisible barrier until her hands are as bruised as the landscape. She screams his name until her throat is hoarse and her mouth tastes of blood.

“I won’t say it!” she shouts. Wails. Maybe this is what banshees sound like. “I won’t, Lucifer! I won’t! I don't accept your sacrifice! I don't agree to your martyrdom!”

The distant man on his distant throne does not answer her. He does not even look her way.

It's almost like he can't.

But the memory of a man on a balcony repeats _Goodbye_. _Goodbye. Goodbye._

Here. Gone.

Just like that.

**_hold my breath ’til your return_ **

Linda leaves messages on Chloe’s phone. Lots of them. First voicemail, then text. Chloe means to return them, but days and weeks pass, and she doesn’t.

One day, Chloe looks up from her work and finds Linda standing on the other side of the desk, a sleeping Charlie strapped to her chest. Chloe squirms, but Linda does not bring up the many ignored calls and texts and emails and messages passed through their mutual friends. Linda says, “We’re going for lunch.”

It’s not a question. Chloe doesn’t bother protesting.

Lunch is a pre-packed picnic of sandwiches and fruit and dark chocolate in Linda’s office. When they’ve finished eating at Linda’s desk, Chloe sinks onto the couch without being entreated, and the words pour out of her—a cascade, a flood, a tsunami of words that tumble over each other and hardly make sense even though she’s the one speaking them. The room is warm and the light golden, and Linda, sitting in her chair with her child held to her chest, is the inverse of Lucifer, dark and distant, on his throne.

“Could Amenadiel do it?” Chloe asks, desperate. “Just—just part of the time?” She buries her face in her hands. “It’s selfish—I know it’s selfish—you have Charlie and Amenadiel needs to be there for Charlie—but I could help. I promise I’d help, Linda, if only I could—if only Amenadiel could—”

Linda’s voice is soft and sad and so gentle Chloe feels like breaking. Maybe she even does. “We thought of that. We did. We had it planned out, even. A schedule, if you can believe it.” Chloe lifts her head again and wishes she hadn’t when she sees the grief spelled out across Linda’s features, clear as the letters spoken by a spelling-bee champion. “We knew Lucifer would need convincing. But when Amenadiel tried to enter Hell, he couldn’t. He thinks Lucifer has the whole place locked down to prevent any inner conflict from … spilling out.”

“Where innocent people could get hurt.”

Linda nods. Charlie finally begins to squirm, uttering mewling little cries as if he, too, regrets the loss of this uncle they speak of. Linda strokes his head.

Trixie was that small, once.

"Are you sure it's not to keep him locked in?" Chloe presses. "Is Amenadiel sure? Because—because I would do anything.” She closes her hands into fists; fists that ache with phantom bruises she earns night after night, beating her phantom hands against a phantom wall in the dreams she dreams of Hell. “Anything. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“I hit bargaining a couple of weeks ago,” says Linda. “I think Amenadiel started there; he stood in the yard and shouted at the sky until the neighbors called the police.” Linda pauses, thoughtful. “It was fine. I explained.” 

She kisses the top of Charlie’s head absently, as if to soothe him and reassure herself of his presence at the same time. Chloe remembers doing the same, and demons had never kidnapped Trixie. “It was his idea, you know. Unprompted. Taking Lucifer’s place. He said if his dad—their dad—wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t act, he’d do what needed to be done.” The shine in Linda’s eyes has nothing to do with the reflection of light on her glasses. “That it was his turn. That Lucifer had suffered long enough.” Charlie coos a single syllable that almost sounds like _yes._ Linda lifts her chin. Even from the couch, across the distance of the table, Chloe sees her bottom lip tremble. “I agree with Amenadiel.”

“But he couldn’t get in.”

Linda blinks. A tear shines in the golden light of her golden room. “But he couldn’t get in.”

"Neither can I," says Chloe, before her words dry up and turn to plaster dust, to ash.

#

Later, Chloe retrieves the letter from her purse, where it’s been moldering for weeks. The corners are no longer crisp, but the ink remains unsmudged. _Chloe._

She doesn’t read it.

She can’t.

But she doesn’t hide it, this time. She props it against the lamp on her bedside table. She says goodnight and good morning. She tells it about her day.

She wonders if this is what people mean by praying.

She wonders if—she hopes that—Lucifer can hear her.

**_my heart, my heart, my drowning heart_ **

Maze moves back, almost without Chloe realizing it.

It’s Lucifer in reverse.

She’s gone. She’s here.

Only it’s different; it’s all different. Maze stacks dishes in the dishwasher. She runs the vacuum. She puts milk in her cereal instead of vodka. Once, out of the corner of her eye, Chloe sees her dusting without a word of complaint.

Instead of relief, this new, helpful Maze only hurts. Chloe can’t help feeling everything that made Maze, _Maze_ —the sharp edges, the eye-rolling and snark, the complete and total disregard for social norms—left when Lucifer did. Chloe leaves dishes on the counter. She neglects housework. She kicks off her shoes and discards her clothing on the floor. Mostly, she remembers to brush her teeth. Showering is hit and miss.

And it just. Keeps. Hurting.

Maze has always been close with Trixie. Now, though, she lingers in rooms where Chloe’s sitting. She eats meals when Chloe is eating; neither of them eats much. If they’re both on the couch, their unseeing gazes fixed on the television because that’s what people are supposed to do, sometimes Maze’s little finger brushes up against Chloe’s little finger. Sometimes, Chloe’s little finger hooks around Maze’s little finger. Sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she sees that Maze is crying and knows she’s crying, too.

She hardly ever speaks. Neither does Maze.

They pretend for Trixie, but they’re bad actors speaking bad lines, jerking across the stage like automatons directed by the hands of a bad puppeteer.

The sadness, the hollowness, the empty broken darkness expands in Chloe, pushing everything else she ever was out of its way, taking up every inch of her body and hardly leaving room to breathe. Chloe imagines she’s a balloon woman made by a clown, like the balloon animals Trixie used to love. One wrong move, and she’ll pop. One wrong twist, and she’ll be useless.

Weeks and weeks and an eternity into this, Trixie crawls into Chloe’s bed. She’s taller now—when did that happen?—and her voice, when she speaks, is more the young woman she’ll be than the little child she was. “You’re having a nightmare,” Trixie says.

“Hey, monkey,” says Chloe with forced brightness so fake it makes her cringe. She knows Trixie can feel it. “I wasn’t even sleeping.”

“You don’t have to pretend, Mom,” says Trixie. “You don’t have to lie. Not for me.”

Trixie burrows into Chloe’s side, wrapping her skinny arm around Chloe’s middle.

Trixie asks, “Did Lucifer go back to Hell?”

And Chloe thinks about lying. Thinks about pretending. Thinks about how she’s pretty sure Trixie took Lucifer at his word about being the Devil without hesitation or doubt—and how, even so, her bright, brilliant, beloved daughter loved Lucifer from their very first meeting, rejection or hatred or fear never once crossing her mind.

Trixie knew. Trixie always knew.

Like a fist clenching around a balloon animal’s limb, a balloon woman's heart, Chloe wonders how much more time she might’ve had with him if she’d only listened to her clear-eyed, clear-hearted daughter.

“He did,” Chloe says, the fist twisting. It’s too much.

“To protect you?”

_I hope you know I’d do anything to protect that little urchin._

“To protect all of us,” Chloe says.

It’s too much.

“That sounds like something he would do.” Trixie yawns. “But, Mommy”—and there was her little girl again, all soft and sleepy—“he wouldn’t want us to be so sad.”

“I know, baby,” Chloe agrees, kissing the top of her daughter’s head. Trixie still falls asleep like a child, awake for one breath and slumbering the next. “But I don’t know how to stop.”

And the fist clenches again. When she pops, it will be real. No bad dream, no trip to Vegas, no vacation. Here. Then gone.

Goodbye spoken in a tone that really meant _the end._

#

Later, when Trixie sleeps deeply enough to snore her soft little snores, Chloe slips from the bed and pads to Maze’s room. Since Chloe isn’t greeted with a knife, she has to believe Maze heard her coming.

Chloe sits next to Maze on the bed, close enough that her pinkie finger brushes Maze’s pinkie finger; Maze curls hers around Chloe’s.

“Did you want him to take you with him?”

Maze shakes her head as if it pains her. “I thought I did. At first, I was pissed. Then, I was confused. And now…”

Chloe counts heartbeats of silence like a miser counting coins. “Yeah,” she finally says. “And now.”

“It fucking sucks.”

Chloe nods, squeezing Maze’s pinkie with her own. “It really does.”

They breathe together in the dark, the wheeze of air being released from a balloon. Chloe says, “I know he’s the Devil, but do you think he’s still angel enough to hear me when I talk to him? When I … pray?” Chloe shrugs, abruptly aware how bizarre it is talking to a literal demon about prayer used like a celestial cell phone because she misses her boyfriend, the Devil.

“If he hears anyone, it’ll be you, Decker.” Maze sighs. “But the conversation only goes one way.”

It's something. At least it's something.

"You ask me, Heaven's crueler than Hell ever dreamed of," Maze says. "And these fucking human feelings are worst of all."

"They fucking suck," Chloe agrees.

The huff of Maze's breath is too disconsolate for laughter. "They really fucking do."

**_my love will never die_ **

Six months after she stood weeping on a balcony, her worst nightmare come to screaming life, Chloe returns to Lucifer’s penthouse. Lux is busy; with Eve’s help, Maze has gone back to running it. Instead of sex and sweat, youth and beauty, the ambience has shifted toward candlelight and comfort and connection, and a crowd looking to feel their feelings instead of hiding from them. With a side of sex and sweat, of course. Maze is still Maze.

Someone Chloe doesn’t know plays the piano—it hurts, it still hurts—and a woman’s mournful voice sings of love and loss and perseverance.

Chloe wonders who the singer lost, who she hasn’t given up on, who she’ll fight for until the end, but she doesn’t pause to ask. Instead, she moves through the crowd like a dream, like a ghost. She’s not here to linger or to listen. She’s not here to sip or sway or sing.

Lucifer’s penthouse is untouched. Instead of white sheets, dust coats the surfaces. In the bedroom, the silk bedclothes lay tangled, just as Chloe left them. The scent of Lucifer’s cologne clings to the clothing that didn’t make it to the cleaners before he left. His toothbrush rests against the edge of the sink, limned in desiccated toothpaste.

Chloe retrieves two glasses and pours a generous shot of whiskey into each—the extra good stuff that Lucifer keeps in the cupboards, safe from the alarmingly regular violence that kept shattering the bottles on the shelves above. She carries the glasses to the balcony. She taps the edge of one against the crystal of the other.

She drinks.

The warmth of the whiskey is nothing like fire, nothing like bitter coldness of Hell. Instead, she’s reminded of laughter and banter as her fingers fumble over piano keys and his pull music as effortlessly into existence as a magician pulls a dove from his hat. It’s the comfort of a hand on her back or the scent of a cologne she’s never smelled on anyone else.

When she’s halfway through her drink, she takes his letter from her pocket. The paper is warm from her heat; the wax supple enough not to break when she slides a thumb underneath it.

The short message is written in the same dark ink, the same elegant hand—a far cry from scribbled stick men and the mess he’d so often made of reports.

_The Queen, you know, is the most powerful piece on the board._

Chloe smiles. Finishes her whiskey. Leaves the other under the blanket of stars flung across the heavens.

He’ll need it, when she’s finished with him.

She makes a phone call.

#

Later, hair pulled back and wearing the most sensible of her shoes, Chloe strides to the barrier Lucifer has erected, or someone has erected around Lucifer. She flattens her palm against it. In the voice she uses with Trixie when homework has not been done, Chloe says, “You will not bar the Queen of Hell from her domain.”

And all around her, Hell shudders, shifts. Acquiesces.

Lets her pass.

If demons see her, they do not approach; she hears them, though, whispering. Sometimes, she almost makes out words. They are afraid. They are excited. They love their King and hate him too; they want to see him fall or fail or smite her from existence.

They don't understand, of course. 

She moves toward the throne of Hell with a purpose.

Lucifer finds her before she finds him. She knows him well enough to see the panic in the lines around his eyes, the fear lurking in the set of his shoulders. “You mustn’t be here,” he says, reaching for her wrist. “Not now, when there’s a credible threat, a would-be Queen who must be defeated.”

Chloe steps away from his hand before it can touch her. “And will you defeat her?”

“I defeat everything,” he snaps, unfurling wings even more glorious when contrasted with the stark surroundings. The ash does not touch them.

Chloe lifts her chin, meeting him gaze for gaze. “Then I guess you have two choices.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Kill me or kiss me, Lucifer Morningstar, King of Hell, but I will not say goodbye.”

Lucifer blinks and stumbles, as if the very fabric of Hell is a rug pulled out from under his feet. “This is impossible. You’re dreaming, Detective. You’re only dreaming.” He pauses, voice lowering to a whisper she has to strain to hear. "I'm trapped on one side. You're on the other."

She nods. Hell rumbles around them. In the shadows, demons hiss and spit and moan, waiting to tear each other apart for the scraps. Chloe strides forward, an arrow pointed at a target.

“Detective,” Lucifer pleads. “We did discuss this—”

“No,” she says. “ _We_ did not. _You_ made a decision. Turns out I disagree with it. And so, I might add, does everyone else.”

She snaps her fingers, which is both melodramatic and the cue Amenadiel’s been waiting for to push his way through the crack in the barrier her determination has opened. Before Lucifer can do more than gape, Amenadiel sweeps her up and carries her to the lonely, towering throne.

Melodramatic, but effective.

By the time Lucifer arrives, Amenadiel has settled himself on the throne the way a suburban dad might sink into a plush recliner to watch Sunday football. “I think it’s time you took a break, brother,” Amenadiel says. “And your Queen concurs.”

“Don’t be daft. I haven't got a Queen. This incursion will be another from Lilith, perhaps, or—”

Amenadiel looks at Chloe. Lucifer’s gaze follows.

“I finally got your note,” Chloe says.

“That—” Lucifer pales and the ash of Hell falls on his dark shoulders and lands in his dark hair.“Chloe, that isn't what I meant.”

She raises her eyebrows.“Isn't it? I suppose you wanted me to know I was strong, then. That I could move on, conquer the board, survive. I suppose you were trying, in your backward maddening Lucifer way, to tell me I didn't need you.”

Lucifer cocks his head. Doubtless, he hears the slavering of his demons now. Chloe hears them too. Maybe she doesn't have wings. Maybe her eyes will never flash anything but annoyance. 

Maybe.

She still has more than they do.

And she'll be damned if she ever lets it go.

“Change is hard,” Chloe says. “And you had to do everything alone for a long, long time. That ends now.”

“That ends now?” Lucifer repeats, as if she’s speaking a language he doesn’t know.

But he’s the Devil.

He speaks every language.

They both know this.

“For what it’s worth,” Chloe says, “I really hope you choose kissing.”

Lucifer shakes his head. This time when he reaches for her, she doesn’t pull away. “You do not belong here, love.”

“Then take me home,” she orders.

And Lucifer Morningstar, King of Hell, bends his head to meet her lips and submits to her command.

#

She wakes draped in silk sheets, limbs languid, beside a naked man with mussed hair and no furrow between his brows.

She pinches herself.

And Lucifer opens sleepy, satisfied eyes and smirks a sleepy, satisfied smirk. “Well played, my Queen,” he purrs. “Care for another round?”


End file.
